


The Dark Fore[S]t

by Kiloueka



Series: Limbo [1]
Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Pre-Canon, Sort Of, concert script
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 02:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13285362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiloueka/pseuds/Kiloueka
Summary: 2B follows through her orders and kills 9S once again. But instead of disappearing forever, he wakes up in a strange place and is greeted by... himself?





	The Dark Fore[S]t

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MeetTheTank](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeetTheTank/gifts).



> Teaser chapter for my upcoming long fic "Limbo", a story where 2B wakes up in a strange world after she's killed by A2. All the 9S that have died by her blade are there and almost all of them greet her with a warm welcome. Almost all... The story will follow 2B and her interactions with the many 9S there, as she helps them all heal from everything they've gone through, and as they help her deal with the ghosts of her past.
> 
> I've fallen in love with this idea and have been brainstorming it with friends for probably over a month now. I don't know when I'll get started on the actual story, but it will be soon. I will be working on Open the Memory Cage as well, I just really love this idea so much I couldn't wait to start.

“Damn..! 2B, why?! Why did you..!”

A wide, white sword penetrates 9S's stomach as delicate, red blood drips down him. Pain shot through him in hot waves and he could feel his life spilling out of him faster than his blood flowed.

“You attempted to access highly confidential information... therefore...” 2B stated, cold and emotionless... as if she were chastising him for getting distracted on a routine mission. But there was something there... something that she couldn't hide from him in his final moments. A slight pause between words, a slight waver in her voice were all that betrayed her dutiful façade.

She stared past him, into the darkness of the temple and slowly, and with a slight tremble, pulled out her sword. Thick, oily blood bubbled out as she freed it from his abdomen; his body convulsed from the shock and he collapsed on the ground, writhing. The impact only served to send him into a fit of coughing as his punctured lung feebly attempted to force a spray of blood from his mouth. He reached out to her, weakly, and let out a garbled cry.

“B-But... 2B... T-Trust... me...”

9S's vital signs begin to fade. Heart rate decreasing, body temperature declining, motor functions failing, pupils dilating. As every one of his parameters breaks down, he chokes out his final words.

“I-It hurts... It... h-hurt... s…”

* * *

“Ngh...” 9S groaned as his senses slowly came back online. The first thing he noticed was a fading dull throb in his abdomen, as if someone had hit him across the stomach with an iron pipe. His entire being felt heavy and it took all his energy to just force his eyes open.

He was met with an inky blackness, and for a moment he thought he had gone blind, until some familiar green shapes came into focus in the corners of his vision.

 _Trees? But we were just in the desert..._ His processors were still scrambled and he fought to make sense of his surroundings. _And the sky... why...? Where's 2B... 2B...2...B..._

Suddenly, realization shot through him as he remembered the moments leading up to his strange awakening in this even stranger place. His whole body jolted as he tried to scramble up, but he could only manage to lift his torso a few inches before falling back down with a thud, knocking the wind back out of him.

“Morning. Sleep well?” A familiar voice said in an almost cheery tone. His... voice? He struggled to turn his head to the source of the sound and was suddenly met with the smiling face of... himself? He had the same hair, the same face, the same clothes; the only difference was that his YoRHa visor was nowhere to be found.

“Wh-what? What's going on? Who are...”

“I'm 9S... the one that came before you...” His smile dimmed a bit, but didn't fade completely.

He was sitting cross-legged on a large, gray rock just a few feet away from him. Behind him was a dense forest with impossibly-tall trees; it looked almost familiar to him.

“B-before me?” He stuttered. “Wh-what do you mean?”

He shifted his gaze away, the smile finally vanishing. “You know... 2B... she...”

“2B...” He gasped; a strange, scalding, buzzing feeling began bubbling in his chest, as if a thousand angry bees were swarming in his lungs. _2B... she... she..._

“She killed me...” He screamed, hot tears filling his eyes. “She killed me! I thought... I thought she cared about me. I thought...”

“She does.” He replied softly. “She cares about every one of us.”

“Ev...ry... one?”

The other 9S nodded as he hopped up and bent over him, holding his hand out to him; his gentle smile had returned, smaller than before. 9S stared at it for a long moment as his mind still processed what was going on. Slowly, he reached out to take it and was carefully pulled to his feet.

“Ngh...” He flinched as a mild, but sharp pain twinged in his stomach and lower back. He slid his hand up his shirt and felt a long, thin scar sliced across his skin. The pain was already receding again but it just left him with more questions he hoped the other 9S could answer.

“Yeah... we all have them... it stops hurting entirely after a few hours, if that makes you feel better.”

He pulled out a cloth from his pocket and handed it to him. “Here.” 9S took it and furiously rubbed his dripping eyes as they began walking. “I'll explain more when we get there. Just... we gotta hurry.”

They weaved their way through the maze of tall trees and scratchy shrubs until the forest came to a very abrupt end and was replaced by a dry, almost desert-like landscape. He stopped in his tracks and glanced behind him and he caught sight of a very clear-cut boundary between the two. It was as if someone had taken a large knife and cut out different pieces of land and stuck them together. Even some of the trees had been vertically cut through; a few had even fallen over into the new terrain.

9S looked around wildly trying to make sense of the situation. The same black, starless sky extended as far as he could see. Ahead of them was an arid dusty settlement filled with a handful of dilapidated shacks. A few of the closer ones were partially or completely destroyed, with dozens of machine corpses littered around it.

The area surrounding the settlement was mostly flat terrain, with few small shrubs and dark rocks scattered everywhere. To his left, the terrain seemed to extend about a kilometer or so before his view was cut off by a ridiculously large pipeline extending from the forest to beyond what he could see. On his right, the land went about half that distance before being bordered by a sheer plateau that wove back and forth and rose upwards maybe thirty to fifty meters.

“Wh-what the hell?” He stammered and looked back at the other 9S.

“This whole place, Limbo, is what we call it, is made up of a patchwork of different areas.” He continued forward, dragging the newcomer with him. “When we die... a place special to us, and some of the surrounding area, seems to follow us here and materialize next to the others.”

Their feet thudded along what remained of a paved road. Asphalt chunks and potholes were everywhere and 9S found he had more trouble navigating through this than he did through the dense underbrush.

“A place... special?” He mumbled. “So does that mean there's a place like this for me?”

The other 9S nodded his affirmation. “And I hope it's what I think it is.”

9S began to search his memory banks for what that might be, but it didn't take long before he found an answer. The memories of relaxing pools of heated water along with the slightly off-putting scent of sulfur slowly filtered back into his mind. He could almost feel a smile coming on, but faded before it even started as his mind focused back on his current situation.

The two scanners quickly passed a break in the buildings and for a brief moment, 9S' eye caught sight of a large, ornate fountain surrounded by a large assemblage of life-size animal sculptures. Each one seemed to be made of a different material. There was a stone cat, a boar made from discarded machine parts, a towering giraffe made from wood scraps, and a lot of smaller animals he couldn't get a close enough look at. It seemed like it would have been a place he enjoyed spending time at, splashing his feet in the cool water while admiring the artistic skill of whoever made those creatures.

The other 9S gazed at it for a brief moment, as if recalling fond memories of the past; his grip tightened on 9S' wrist and picked up the pace when it disappeared from view.

“So that place... back there...” 9S said. “With the statues and whatever... was that an important place to you?”

“Yeah, it was.” He sighed. “I made the boar, actually... well... completed it, really. Whoever started it had been killed by that machine raid you saw before we arrived. Anyway, there was nothing to do for a long time and there were so many dead machines around that I decided to finish what she started.” He paused and smiled as he shook his head softly.

They exited the settlement and continued on the road for a while longer until, just like that, the dry desert terrain abruptly ended in the same clear-cut way as it began. The sandy soils and crumbling road were replaced with a grassy field with young oak trees and lupines littered throughout.

“2B chastised me so many times for working on it.” He chuckled. “But I caught her several times admiring it and the others when she thought I wasn't looking.”

“Heh... I noticed her doing that with things I did too...” He mumbled, then sighed a long, drawn-out sigh.

“I always knew she was hiding something from me, but I never knew what until it was too late to back down... I didn't think she'd do it though. I thought she didn't want to and we'd figure something out and...”

“She doesn't want to... She hates it, in fact... But... she doesn't have much of a choice. They'd just send more E-units to kill her too if she refused.” He took a deep breath before continuing.

“I wish I could say I didn't think she'd do it either... but I did and I fought back and... well... anyway, come on, we're almost there and all your questions will be answered soon.”

“O-ok.” He stuttered. _She didn't... want to... but then, why..?_

They approached a large grove of trees, not nearly as tall or as ancient as the ones in the forest he woke up in, but still just as disorienting to be traveling through. It was a good thing the other 9S seemed to know what he was doing as he continued on with determination.

Beyond the collection of flora, a large screen of some sorts began to reveal itself. It was roughly rectangular shaped with jagged, uneven edges and seemed to be suspended in the air. He could see someone on it... 2B? She was kneeling over something and... shaking?

“Is that... me?” He gasped as more trees parted to reveal more of the screen... and a bloody, lifeless body collapsed on the ground before her.

He could vaguely hear his pod chattering on about something he couldn't quite hear; he honed his perception and picked up pace until he passed the last tree bordering a small clearing quite different from the one he woke up in.

“...duties include the punishment of such actions.” That was definitely Pod 153's voice.

He slowed to a walk and stood stark still, staring at what was unfolding before him. The other 9S released his grip and pulled up one of the many diverse chairs that littered the clearing. He sat down, not even bothering to wonder what they were all doing there or why there happened to be two other 9S sitting nearby watching the screen with rapt attention. His eyes became glued to the scene before him as he realized what he was viewing.

That was where he died... in the sand temple. _What the hell?_

“No.2 Type E should have understood that this mission's outcome was already determined, and acted accordingly.” His pod hovered over 2B... 2...E..? who continued to tremble and curl in on herself more. She mouthed some words 9S couldn't make out and he felt his chest tighten seeing what a pitiful state his normally cool and comprised partner was in.

The other 9S pulled up another chair and sat beside him; he paid him no mind.

“Is she...” He breathed.

“Question: Requesting current status of unit No.2 Type E, who, despite the predicted events, has yet to complete the given mission.”

“Shut up already...” 2B rasped. A single tear fell from her eye and splashed onto 'his' face; she quickly wiped the others away and began gulping down air and digging her fingers into her knees.

“In addition, emotions are prohibited for YoRHa units. Proposal: Halt the expression of emotions, terminate unit 9S's current personal data, and reinstall—”

“I told you to shut up!” She screamed, slamming her sword down on the ground, creating a deafening clatter. The executioner let out a piercing, grating howl and drove her fist into the wall again and again. Wet tearing sounds and small metallic crackles could be heard over the crunching of cement as she punched hard enough to split the skin and fracture her carbon-metallic skeleton.

With each punch she threw, 9S could feel his feelings of hurt and betrayal fall away from him. With each punch she threw, 9S began to feel a little more guilty for ever having those feelings in the first place. With each punch she threw, 9S began to understand the reasoning behind her acting so cold and distant to him more and more.

Blood sprayed against the wall and dripped down her damaged fingers as her blows slowed and she was left trembling and choking back sobs.

“9... S...” Her damaged hand shook as she reached out to cup his lifeless face. A touch so delicate, so light, ran down his cheek; in another life it could have been the gentle goodbye caress of a lover as she left for a mundane day of work. A touch too faint to wake him, so he could enjoy just a little more much-needed rest before he started his own day.

“2B...” 9S stood up and stumbled toward her, ripping his visor off and tossing it to the side to see her as she truly was. He reached out to the screen as if she were right there and extended his hand to touch hers, but gasped as it phased through the screen as if it didn't even exist.

“I'm s... I'm so—rry.” Her voice was faint and strained.

“2B... I...” He whispered, tears forming in his eyes and a knot growing in his throat. “I forgive you...”

He barely registered the other 9S approach him until he placed his hand on his shoulder. He turned slowly to look at him, still in shock from what he just witnessed.

“You ok?”

“Hah hhahh...” He released a sorrowful laugh in response. “How long has this been going on?”

“About ten months, in your time.”

“In my... time?”

“Yeah... time's weird here... sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower than out there. We don't know why it does that and only have vague ideas on how to control it... but it's why it looks like only a few minutes have passed out there since you died, but here it's been around an hour.”

“Oh... that makes no sense...”

“...Nothing makes sense here really, you just kinda... get used to it.”

“Oh...” 9S looked back up at the screen at 2B. She was moving a lot slower than before; her hands drifted at a snail's pace as she wiped her eyes again and again to try to compose herself. His pods bleating of commands were warped and sluggish and he could see 2B's expression slowly twist more and more as she dug her nails into her head.

“Shut up!” She screeched. “I'm reinstalling it now.” The executioner pulled a handful of chips from her bag and threw them on the ground next to 9S' body.

9S slowly looked around the clearing as she worked, finally taking the time to get a good look at his surroundings. It was roughly half the size of the command room in the Bunker, a misshapen circular break in the trees, with finger-like projections of missing plants extending beyond the main area. Blackened stumps of fallen trees and rusted machine parts were barely visible under the thick overgrowth of grasses and weeds.

The screen was directly in the center of the clearing and about the length and height of his room. The edges were uneven, like broken glass; it was as if someone had taken a hammer and shattered space itself to open an intangible portal to the other world. The screen itself was paper thin and floated a few feet off the ground, not attached to anything or projected from anywhere; it just... existed in the center of that clearing.

9S made his way around to the back side, studying the jagged edges closely; the same scene was playing there too, still at the same glacial pace.

He turned to look behind him. At the other end of the clearing was a small collection of plain gray bunkers, six in total. The layout seemed hastily-planned; it was as if someone had taken some large gray boxes, cut a few square holes in them and dropped them haphazardly in the forest. Most of them were sealed with hastily-built metal doors as well as one or two dirty plastic windows, but two were just opened to the elements.

Soft orange light shone through a few of the windows and outside them lay a menagerie of tools and scraps, neatly stored and organized. The nearest building was also ringed by a multitude of flowers in rusty pots made of discarded machine heads and torsos. Everything from roses, to lilies, to anemones thrived in those containers.

9S took a step toward the buildings as the other three approached.

“So uh... ready for a tour?” One of them asked.

“But 2B.” He gasped, flashing a look back at his grieving partner, still huddled beyond the intangible screen..

“It'll be fine.” He assured. “It'll continue at this speed for a while... Plus, we're recording it so we can always go back to anything we missed.”

“You figured out how to make a recording of this?”

“Well uh... by recording, we mean 'point a camera at it.' So... yes... we have.”

“Heh...” 9S snorted. “You all really are me, aren't you.”

“More or less.” He shrugged.

“And this is all of you?”

“No.” He stated. “I mean... everyone that madeit to Limbo is here, but... she... killed more of us... but many never made it to this place after they died. 9S models she killed before they met her never appeared here in the first place. And ones that only knew her for a few days would like... start to materialize, but slowly fade out of existence...” He let out a deep sigh before continuing. “We tried everything we could to save them, but nothing worked”

“We still don't understand much of anything about this place...” One of the others said. “But we believe that a strong connection with 2B is what keeps us stable in this world. Something like that...”

The third 9S chimed in. “We've been working night and day to learn more, and figure out how to get out of here... or at least... to tell 2B that we're ok... but we really haven't found an explanation for anything really.”

“We've been watching over her since I first came here... It gets harder for her each time she has to kill us... I don't know how much longer she can handle it. And I don't know how much longer it'll take before... one of us finally has the foresight to stop digging before it's too late...” All three of the 9S shifted a bit where they stood and broke eye contact momentarily.

“A-anyway. We can start showing you around now if you'd like.”

“Wait,” another 9S butt in, “we probably should introduce ourselves first.”

“Introduce...?” 9S said, raising an eyebrow while tilting his head.

“Yeah, well... since there's three of us... now four, we decided to give ourselves our own nicknames to avoid confusion. We couldn't really think of anything that had much meaning to us so we just researched old human languages and like... found whatever translation of 'nine' sounded cool. So uh... well without further ado..” The three lined up shoulder to shoulder in front of 9S.

“I'm Nove.” Said the leftmost 9S. “I'm the first one to have come here. You can tell me apart from the others from well... this.” He pointed at the diagonal, pink scar in the center of his forehead. It extended from his hairline down to the start of his left eyebrow. It was rough and uneven and raised up a bit, almost as if someone literally glued the skin back together. 9S found himself touching his own forehead unconsciously in response.

“Nove... what language is that from?”

“Oh, it's uh, Italian, and some others I think. It sounds kinda like 'Nova' and I thought that was cool.” He shrugged. “A-anyway.” He slapped the center 9S on the shoulder.

“I'm Iva. It's Samoan. And...” He paused to undo the gold buttons of his coat and let it fall to reveal a ray of lightning-like scars radiating out from under his tank-top. He took a deep breath and peeled his shirt off to show the full extent of the scarring. The center of his chest was covered in a thick layer of mottled scars, roughly the size of an outstretched palm and almost perfectly round; the colors consisted of a mix of rashy pinks, necrotic grays, and his normal pale peachy hues. His skin was littered with small flecks of black, as if bits of his carbon skeleton had bubbled up from beneath his flesh and fused with his silicon outer casing. The same lightning-like projections radiated outward in every direction, extending from a bit below his waistline up to his shoulders and barely making it to his choker.

“My own pod...” He mumbled as 9S slapped his hands over his dropped jaw.

“D-does it hurt?” He stuttered.

“Not anymore. It looked worse at first too but it's smoothed out a lot.” He took a breath and turned around to show a smaller version of his chest wound a bit lower on his back.

“So... yeah.”

The final 9S turned to him as Iva hastily threw his clothes back on. “And I'm Tara. You already know me, sorta... And...” He turned around and lifted up his hair to reveal a large, mottled, roundish scar extending a bit below his hairline. 9S could only see it for a split second before Tara let his hair drop as he spun back around.

“We... probably have a lot more we can say about ourselves... but we'll get to that later.”

9S nodded slowly, flicking his eyes between the three. “Ok so...” 9S lifted his hand to point at each of them. “Nove. Iva. Tara.”

“Yep! And don't worry.” Tara said. “We usually wear different clothes anyway, we just put our uniforms back on so we didn't freak you out too much.”

“I think that effort might have been in vain.” He mumbled, pinching his forehead with his thumb and forefingers as a pressure that had been building behind his eyes was starting to grow to an uncomfortable level. “None of this makes sense. The sky's black but everything's still lit up like it's daytime. There's a weird phantom screen in the middle of a random forest that shows whatever 2B and I were doing. And there's just huge chunks of land that are like glued together. What the hell is this place?”

“You should see where the land ends.” Said Iva. “It's literally a sheer cliff that drops off into nothingness. It's like someone just took a giant knife and carved these areas out and dropped them here next to each other. Oh and also you gotta see where they overlap a bit. It's like a glitch in a human video game where two objects are on top of each other and—”

“Iva.” Tara hissed, smacking him lightly on the shoulder and pointing at 9S. The boy was leaning back, head waving from side to side as his wide eyes flashed between the three as the situation seemed to hit him all at once...

“I think I might need to sit down and process this a bit...” He said, stumbling towards a chair.

“Uhh... right, sorry.” Tara ran up beside him and took his arm in his hands. “Maybe the tour can wait, you probably need some rest. Come, there's beds in here.” He gestured toward the flower-bordered shack.

9S nodded slowly and gave 2B one more glance as the three led him to the nearest building and pried open the door. Inside was a sea of mattresses and pillows covering most of the floor. A few old, metal desks piled with books and tools and gadgets were shoved up against the far wall, and between them were multitudes of clothes hanging from makeshift clothing racks made of poles nailed to the desks.

9S stumbled to the nearest mattress and collapsed on it, curling up in a ball and pulling the nearest blanket over him.

“Sorry for overloading you like that.” Iva coughed.

“Don't worry about it.” He mumbled. “I'd have asked for those answers anyway sooner or later.” He pulled into himself more and sighed. “2B... why are they making her, of all people, do this, when it hurts her like that?”

“You know Command.” Tara growled. “You know what they're hiding from us. You know it's not beyond them to force a genuinely kind soul to do such unkind work. They don't care.”

“They're doing all of this to perpetuate a lie to keep this stupid war going when there's no point to any of it anymore.” 9S pounded the bed with his fist. “This isn't right, this isn't fair!”

“No, it's not.” Nodded Iva. “It's fucked up and it's not right and we'll find a way to stop it... somehow.” The others gave their silent agreement and they sat quietly for the next few moments.

“So...” 9S mumbled. “Do you have any idea how?”

“Not really... We've collected every communication device we could scavenge in these areas and nothing could reach the outside world. We just keep tinkering with stuff and hope something will get through one day.”

“If we could just establish a connection to someone out there,” Nove added, “maybe they could have a better shot at figuring something out... but then again, we have to be careful or we risk YoRHa finding out about us and erasing us permanently as soon as they figure out how.”

“Are there any other places besides these?”

“None that we can see; we're alone in this void. We've sent out drones to survey the surrounding area but there's literally nothing.”

“And how come there's no other androids or machines here? Wouldn't they appear too if they were in the places that came with us?”

“No idea, really.” Tara shrugged.

“You said that having a strong connection to 2B is what brought us here?”

“Well,” said Nove, “It's really just a hunch. The only evidence we have is that only the 9S models that have been with her for a while even make it here. It's just nice to think that... maybe... something special between us allows us to be here. That maybe she subconsciously opened a port to some server somewhere so we could evacuate our data.” His eyes softened slightly and he smiled as he glanced in the direction of the screen.

“Er... but like I said, it's all just speculation... and wishful thinking... Ok mostly just wishful thinking.” Nove's face adopted a pinkish hue as he shuffled backward a bit to hide behind the other two.

“Oh...” 9S' mind slowed, but still struggled to follow as he felt exhaustion dragging him down faster than he could fight it. _So 2B..._

“So... if you're right about the connection with 2B then... if she dies for good one day... will she come here too?”

“...I sure hope so.” Tara mumbled. “If that's the case, then... I almost hope it happens soon... I don't want her... and our future selves to hurt anymore... Is it wrong to wish for that?”

“I-I don't know.” Iva sighed. “I want to see her again... and tell her it's ok... but I want her to find peace in the real world, with the next 9S she meets.”

“Yeah...” The other three nodded simultaneously.

“...A-anyway.” Said Nove, after an uncomfortable silence broke out. “Let's get some rest before we burn ourselves out more. We've all had a hard day especially... actually, before that, we should help pick out a name for the newcomer.”

“Oh, right.” Gasped Tara. He weaved his way through the piles of bedding and dug through the mess of papers on one of the desks before pulling out a single, tattered sheet.

“We wrote all the names we could find down, so we'll just read them off to you and you pick one you want.”

“Sure...” 9S muttered. Nove was definitely right about the whole 'rest' thing; he could feel his body become heavy and his eyelids droop as the day's events caught up to him and the soft bedding enveloped him in a warm cocoon. He wasn't even sure _how_ he could sleep with all this new information simultaneously buzzing around in his head, but who knows, maybe it was some weird effect of being in Limbo.

Tara cleared his throat and began reading. “Naum, Naya, Tisa, Koe, Naoi—”

“Naoi sounds nice.” He mumbled.

“Oh, uh. Ok. Do you want to hear the rest though?”

“I'm good...” His muscles relaxed and his body spread out on the mattresses as his stone-heavy lids shut tight.

“Well ok, Naoi it is! I guess you can always pick another one if you change your mind... in the end, we're all still 9S.”

“Mmm...” Was all he could make out before sleep took him over.

* * *

_2B I... forgive you for what you did... for what you were forced to do..._

_It was inevitable... so I'm glad it was you and not someone else..._

_Because I got to spend time with you... I loved being by your side._

_I want to keep meeting you again and again..._

_Even though..._

_Is that... selfish?_

_I'm sorry... maybe I'm the one who should be apologizing._

_I just wish I had a little more time..._

_Maybe I could have gotten the courage to tell you something important..._

_But it's pointless now that we'll never see each other again._

_2B... I..._


End file.
